Dengue variant ‘DEN-2’ spreading more

People are being infected mostly with dengue variant (DEN-2) this year. Analysing a limited number of samples it has been found that 62 per cent of the patients have been infected with dengue variant DEN-2.

And, the remaining 38 per cent of the patients have been infected with another variant DEN-3. This information has been provided by the government’s Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research (IEDCR).

Meanwhile, the number of dengue patients getting admitted into hospitals and death toll of already admitted patients continue to rise.

A total of 477 people have been admitted into hospitals across the country within 24 hours, starting from Friday 8:00am to Saturday 8:00am. And, four people have died during this same period. With this, the death count from dengue this year reached 33.

The number of dengue cases has been noticed to increase right from the start of the year, though it wasn’t even the season of dengue. Epidemiologists have said that there are four different dengue variants: DEN-1, DEN-2, DEN-3 and DEN-4.

When infected with any one of these dengue variants, the body forms an immune system against that certain variant. So, people don’t get infected with the same variant twice. But, they can get infected with a different variant though.

This way, there is a risk of getting infected four times in total. Compared to being infected for the first time, a second-time infection increases both the intensity and the complexity of the condition.

IEDCR chairman professor Tahmina Shirin told Prothom Alo yesterday (Saturday) that IEDCR has collected samples from patients, admitted to several hospitals of Dhaka.  

And those samples were analysed last week. DEN-2 variant has been identified in 62 per cent of the samples while Den-3 has been identified in 38 per cent of the samples.

Tahmina Shirin said that DEN-3 was prevalent in the sample analysis of 2022. As much as 90 per cent patients had been infected with Den-3 and the remaining almost 10 per cent patients had DEN-4.

Nobody has proper information of how many people in Dhaka or in other districts have been infected or being infected with dengue more than once.

On the other hand, it’s not possible for any patient to know with which variant he had been infected in the past. Epidemiologists however say that if one variant is predominant for a year and then another variant becomes prevalent in the next, there remains a risk of the infection turning more complex.

But no straight answer could be found to the question, whether there is any such risk this year or not.

Regarding this, public health expert Mushtuq Husain told Prothom Alo that if there’s a prevalence of DEN-2 this year and if people become infected for the second time, there’s a risk of the condition being critical.

Director general of the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) Abul bashar Mohammad Khurshid Alam in a press briefing last week had said that dengue ‘shock syndrome’ can be noticed more among the patients getting admitted to hospitals.  

Shock syndrome means when the platelets of a dengue patient go through a rapid fall. When this happens, the condition of the patient worsens and they fall unconscious in many cases.

As many as 3,432 people have been infected with dengue this year. Of them, 77 per cent patients are from Dhaka while the rest of the 23 per cent are from different areas outside of Dhaka.